I asked
DOE representatives Manuela Fonseca and Anne Bordonarro (who ably managed the
session last night) to give us their personal view of the session (rather than
have one person's interpretation), so I forwarded Dennis's previous message
(see below). Here is their response:

"Bill,

Thanks for sharing this with us and giving us the opportunity to comment.

I think that we do need to revisit the endorsement; however, it is to
premature to state that we will definitively change it and how. We still
have another Public Comment session tomorrow to take comments. We also
are receiving many written comments on the endorsements. All of this
feedback needs to be collected and analyzed before we can make a
recommendation to the Vermont Standards Board.

We did learn a great deal from last night's public comment session and we
need to address these comments.

Manuela & Anne "

This should, in NO way, diminish the
enthusiasm that Dennis and many of us came away from the meeting with! The
discussion was helpful and positive, and will hopefully lead to a better
environment for educational technology in Vermont.

-----Original
Message-----From: School Information Technology Discussion
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Dennis
BeloinSent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 7:10 AMTo:[log in to unmask]Subject: Meeting on
endorsements

Hello,

The endorsement hearings last night went very well. The
DOE went on record stating that the Educational Technology Coord. endorsement
would need to be changed from what they are hearing from public review.
They really did understand that the technical part of the endorsement should
not be in it. They will hopefully be chaning the title of the
endorsement to Educational Technology Integration Coord. This would mean
that only educators holding classes with kids would would have to get this
endorsement or could get this endorsement.

Everyone was in favor of the educational technology educators
endorsement.

I did take something out of this meeting and that is that Tech
leaders / Techy / Systems people accros Vermont need to start meeting and
working together. I think together we hold the key to making technology
work and integrate better in schools. I put an invitation out there that
we start meeting on the ILN.